


Lucas: the kind warrior

by stillusesapencil



Series: an aching kind of growing [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Billy Hargrove Is an Asshole, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dad!Steve, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Lord of the Rings references, lucas has good parents, mentions of abuse, mentions of neil hargrove - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 13:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14058195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillusesapencil/pseuds/stillusesapencil
Summary: Lucas is a man of action. When everyone else (Mike) was fawning over a girl he was pretty sure is alien, he got out anddid things, actually looking for Will. When Dustin got clouded by science and discovery, Lucas actually reached out to the fiery girl and rescued her. He is the knight in this tale, sweeping the damsel away from her tower and riding away into the sunset. And yet, in the end, she saves herself. And that is why he likes her.





	Lucas: the kind warrior

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so glad to finally deliver this. It took me a long time. Maybe because I wrote two other fics and also had midterms while writing this.

In a house in Hawkins Indiana, there lived a boy names Lucas Sinclair. Not an old house, but a new home. It was new and clean-smelling, and new things require bravery. 

~

The summer before second grade, Lucas moves to Hawkins, Indiana. He supposes it’s an alright place to be. It’s kinda old, but Lucas can handle it. His parents tell him he’ll find friends. 

But right now, it’s summer, and while everyone else has friends to go to the pool with and toss baseball and ride bikes up and down the street, Lucas is at home in a new house that still smells a bit of paint. Instead, he helps his mother unpack and fends off Erica’s demands to play hide and seek in the empty cardboard boxes. 

About a month before school starts, Lucas’ father unpacks a J.R.R. Tolkien box set. Lucas watches as he runs his fingers down the whitened creases on the paper spine. 

“Here, Lucas,” he says. “See if you like these.”

Other parents might not have given their young child those books yet. They might have said, wait a year, wait till he can sit still. But Lucas has always liked reading, and he has a “high reading level” according to his teachers. He sometimes skips bits and has to sound out big words, but he gets it.

Lucas reads the Hobbit in a week and the rest of the Lord of the Rings in a month. And in the books, Lucas is a warrior, a fighter. He is Aragon and he is Faramir. He fights the evil horde and he wins. Lucas goes for a bike ride with the riders of Rohan carrying a stick sword. He bikes through a thick forest and thinks of it as Mirkwood. He raises his arms to the sky and freezes the trolls with sunlight. He is Lucas the warrior. 

When he starts school at Hawkins elementary, and starts looking for a fellowship.

Lucas is smart. He knows friends don’t just fall into your lap. He has to choose his friends and make them his friends, after all. So when he sees Mike and Will by themselves at lunch, he decides he should join them. They are already good friends—like Frodo and Sam, maybe, or Merry and Pippin. He sees how they walk side by side, and how taller Mike likes to put a hand on shorter Will’s shoulder.

So he takes a deep breath, reminds himself that he is brave and this is a battle he can win, and he sits down at their table. 

He will never regret that decision. 

It’s a year of third-wheeling before Dustin comes, and they have a full party. A small fellowship. 

He and Dustin become the balance to Mike and Will. Two by two. They make a square with their desks and win the science fair. And it’s perfect. Just Lucas and his friends. 

They play D&D and tell stories and watch Star Wars and go on adventures. Dustin and Lucas start planning D&D campaigns together. Will takes them to castle Byers and teaches them the password and they defend a castle. 

They are a party, they are friends. There’s a lot of rules—protect each other, be kind, don’t lie. It’s good. It’s perfect, actually, to Lucas’ mind. He sees nothing wrong, nothing that could go amiss. They are balanced to each other perfectly.

The first thing to be said about Lucas is he is a noticer. An observer. Lucas watches things, takes them into his heart, and understands them. 

Lucas notices that he is different, that he is one of maybe five black kids in the school. And for the most part, he doesn’t get wrapped around the axle about it. Lucas is too practical. There are moments, of course—when Troy and James come around they pick on Dustin for his teeth, shove Will for his puniness, make fun of Mike for attempting to be a warrior, and Lucas…well, Lucas knows why they pick on him, and they never have to say it. 

Lucas notices his father. He sees the way he washes the dinner dishes without being asked and how he apologizes for his mistakes. He sees the way he kisses his mother hello, every time, no matter how short it’s been. He sees the way he is kind and gentle. 

Lucas notices that Will’s father is gone, and that’s a good thing; Dustin’s father is gone, and it is neither a good nor bad thing; and Mike’s father is here, but not here, and that’s a bad thing. 

Fathers are important, he realizes, when all three of his friends lack fathers in some way. He vows to be a good father—present, kind, and available. He vows to be a good husband, someday. But for now, he keeps observing. 

Here’s the thing about Lucas. Somewhere along the way, he chose them. He looked at these three boys and he said, they are mine. 

So when El comes, Lucas is not ready. He did not choose her. And he doesn’t understand how Mike could choose her. To him, it’s a betrayal. How can Mike be infatuated with her when Will is still missing? How can Mike be more concerned about this random psycho girl than his literal best friend that he’s known since he was five?

So Lucas gets his ass in gear, and does something about it.

Lucas knows that he is not the hero of this story. He is the sidekick, the friend. Mike fancies himself the hero of the story, the one to ride in on his white horse and rescue the girl and the boy. Mike is the one who will be the hero, and Lucas gets to stand by his side. 

Mike might be their leader, but Lucas is their warrior. 

He doesn’t trust El, and it turns out, he was right. El messed with their compasses and throws him across the junkyard. She’s a psycho, it’s plain to see. 

It’s not until later that Mike tells him about the quarry and El saving him after he jumps off the cliff. And it’s not until later that Lucas really understands what happened with El. How El consumed Mike’s world. 

It’s after she finds Will while floating in a suspension tank he and Dustin built. It’s after they race through the halls of school pursued by screams and blood. It’s after she extends her hand as blood pours out of her nose and kills a monster against a chalkboard that he understands.

El is just as much his as Mike or Will or Dustin. He chooses this girl, too. 

After El is…gone (not dead, she can’t be dead) he and Dustin talk about her. Talking to Mike about her wouldn’t be good—he’s too sad, and Lucas is afraid that talking about El will make him hurt more. Will is still sick—Lucas can see in the pinch of his mouth and the shadows under his eyes. And Will never met her anyway.

Lucas and Dustin go to Dustin’s house to plan a campaign, and it’s Dustin who says, “I miss her. El.”

Lucas nods. “Yeah. Me too. I just…wish I’d known her better.”

Dustin shrugs. “Yeah, Mike kinda hogged her.” 

And it goes like that. Dustin tells and retells the story of the quarry. They research together psychic powers and other dimensions. They try to find a way to get her back, but it all seems hopeless. But she was here, and she was important, and maybe if they talk about her enough, they’ll bring her back.

He and Mike keep fighting. Lucas hates it, because they are _best friends_ and most of the time, they get along, but sometimes they fight. And it hurts. There’s not a reason for it now, not like Mike’s confusion about who was really important. It’s just the smallest things, now. Mike wants to always win the battle, but Lucas needs to win, too. And just because he’s sad doesn’t mean he gets an excuse to take it out on everyone else. 

Even in times of trouble, it is important to remember that people have feelings, and you cannot make them hurt just because you are hurting, too.

He asks his dad about it. “Dad, when your friends are sad, how do you help them?”

His father thinks on that. “Well, son, you listen to them. And then you let them be sad. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

So he tries. He listens, and he gives Mike as much leeway as he can. But that doesn’t stop his feelings from getting hurt. 

Even since Will’s disappearance, his mother always peeks in his door after she thinks he’s asleep to make sure he’s okay. His dad always reminds him to be safe. They love him and they trust him. 

Sometime during the summer, his mother suggests he take up birdwatching. So he takes his binoculars and his bandana and goes to Mirkwood. He searches the trees, listens to the birdcalls. It’s nice. It’s peaceful. He needs it. 

He gets a job, too, mowing lawns and weeding flower beds. There’s something extremely satisfying about doing things with your hands to earn money. It’s fulfilling. Working with earth between his hands gives him joy. When he gets paid, he knows he has truly earned it. 

The thing is he _knows._ He knows that people look at him and see a punk kid up to no good. So he dresses nicely and tucks in his shirt and makes sure the toes of his converse stay relatively clean. He turns in his homework on time and never stays out too late and certainly never listens to questionable music.

He wants to be more than a stereotype or a diversity quota. He is Lucas, the warrior, Lucas, the ranger. He will be more than what people of this town see when they first look at him. 

Erica teases him for his perpetual focus on looking good. She rolls her eyes outside his door and steals his action figures to annoy him. It’s her job, as little sister, to be as annoying as humanly possible. 

Lucas swears he loves her. It’s just hard to remember sometimes. 

In the fall, that cursed season, Will starts coming back from his doctor’s appointments more and more pale. 

Lucas should have known. He should have guessed something was going to go wrong. 

And that’s when Max Mayfield enters his life and changes him forever. 

He can’t understand why Mike doesn’t like her. She’s cool, she skateboards, she’s _totally tubular_ but apparently that’s not enough for Mike. Mike also tries to tell him he can’t be Venkman because he’s black. Who says Venkman can’t be black? Mike needs to let go of himself and his big ego for one minute to realize how truly terrible he’s being right then. Lucas is more than the pigment in his skin. Max is more than her gender. 

When he and Dustin start…well, he wouldn’t dub it “stalking,” but _following_ Max, Lucas gets an uneasy feeling in his gut. He was raised to be a gentleman, and following a girl around is not part of that. And he feels bad about it—he lies to Keith about getting a date with Nancy just to put a stupid out of order sign on a game. 

He doesn’t like it. But he owes Max the truth. Friends don’t lie. 

(He wants to be her friend, he tells himself. A friend. Friend, friend, friend. He knows he’s in denial.) 

“Great story,” she says, and his chest aches. _It’s not just a story, Max. Please believe me._

It takes time, but Lucas is honest, and he doesn’t know what flips the switch for her, but eventually she believes him.

(He won’t know until later, until she tells him, that it was the look on his face and the truth in his eyes.)

Billy threatens him, and Lucas knows why—that prejudices are the result of veins of hate running deep under the skin and through the bones. That nothing he can do will stop Billy from always seeing Lucas as problem. As wrong. As a plague. 

He ignores it. He picks Max up from under her window and pretends he’s on a valiant steed, whisking the princess to safely. Some would say Max is no princess, but Lucas sees her as one.

And yeah, things go to shit, but she’s beside him, and somehow, that makes it better.

As they fight the Upside Down again, as they try to reach Will, Lucas keeps thinking _how can I fight it? What can I do to help?_

Granted, he’s fourteen, there’s not a lot he can actually do, but he’s going to do his best. When the Byer’s house is surrounded by demodogs, he straps on his wrist rocket and swears his going to knock the sonsofbitches between the eyes. 

And El comes back. 

He’s never seen Mike so broken. So whole. So brokenly whole. 

He tells her they talked about her every day. He missed her. 

Billy’s car revs in the driveway. When he bursts through the door (great, Dustin, your friend failed us), Lucas wants to run, but he is a warrior, and he will fight to his dying breath.

Billy pins him to a wall. 

_Shit, shit shit._

Mike and Max and Dustin are shouting, but Lucas’ world has narrowed to Billy’s bloodshot eyes and thundering pulse from his palm digging into Lucas’ windpipe. 

Billy breathes hot air and spit in Lucas’ face, like a dragon. Lucas is no princess. He knees Billy in the crotch, sliding down the wall. 

Then Steve comes crashing in, decking Billy with a single punch. 

It’s brutal. Steve is failing, falling, crashing like a tower. 

And then.

It’s Max. Of course it’s Max, grabbing the tranquilizer and shoving it into Billy’s neck. She wordlessly holds up Billy’s key. 

He loves her so much. 

Dustin and Lucas drag Billy into the yard. Max gives his ribs a spiteful kick. 

Then Dustin goes back for Steve and some bandaids. He starts putting little rainbows on Steve’s face.

“You really think that will help?” Lucas asks. They’re _banaids._ They aren’t meant for blunt force head trauma and concussions.

Dustin glares at him. Lucas bites back more sass. Steve did jump into a fight for him, after all. Not that Lucas couldn’t take care of himself. 

There’s no question about Lucas riding shotgun. He doesn’t let there be. If they weren’t speeding down the highway with death on the battlefield in front of them, he’d stop to think about driving beside this girl with the world ahead of them. 

They pull up in the pumpkin field, and she says, “I told you. Zoomer.” 

Lucas grins so hard he feels his ears move. 

After they burn the tunnels, and they go home, Lucas finds himself staring into the eyes of a sweaty, breathless, sooty Max. She looks suddenly broken and terrified. 

“We did it,” he says.

“I know. I—” she blinks rapidly, turning away. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

She shrugs. “For all of it.” 

Lucas grins back. They’re going to be okay. 

So winter comes. Lucas starts having to wear his heavy coat. Max starts disappearing into a massive parka, a beanie, and a scarf. 

“Cold?” he asks.

“Shut up, Stalker,” she gripes. “I’m from California.”

She starts coming over after school. Having her over is different from having one of the boys. With Dustin or Mike or Will there’s a relaxed feeling, like sliding into a comfortable shoe that’s broken in to his foot shape. With Max it’s totally different. Everything is new. Everything is a first. 

They eat cookies his mom makes, they talk about California, they talk about video games and books. 

Lucas is a man of action. When everyone else (Mike) was fawning over a girl he was pretty sure to alien, he got out and _did things_ , actually looking for Will. When Dustin got clouded by science and discovery, Lucas actually reached out to the fiery girl and rescued her. He is the knight in this tale, sweeping the damsel away from her tower and riding away into the sunset. And yet, in the end, she saves herself. And that is why he likes her. 

So Lucas puts on his metaphorical armor, and asks his crush to a dance. 

He asks her to the snowball, words blockishly tumbling. “Will you snowball me?”

She pulls a face, squinting brows and squiggling her mouth. “Snowball you? Is this an Indiana thing I don’t know about?”

“No, I meant. Will you go to the snowball with me?”

“You mean that stupid dance?”

Lucas’ face falls and he picks at a fray in his jeans. “Yeah, it’s just a stupid dance.”

“Of course I’ll go.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. Of course.” She grins and gives a cute little shrug. 

(The day of, Erica catches him rehearsing in the mirror. Stupid sister.)

That night, he tries to ask her to dance, and it comes out all wrong, but she knows what he means. They manage to sway and step from side to side, and then she leans in and kisses him. 

He feels like he has slayed a dragon. He has climbed a tower and gotten the girl. He has won a war. And all because this girl with red hair has chosen him.

After the snowball, Lucas figures it’s important she meet Max. So they orchestrate a meeting at Hopper’s house with Mike and El and Lucas and Max. 

At first, El is suspicious of Max, regarding her through her eyelashes and gluing herself to Mike’s side. Max offers smiles and easy kindness, and over a game of Monopoly (El’s first) they both loosen. 

Maybe El will find it nice to have another girl around. 

Soon after, Lucas convinces Mike to let Max join their D&D sessions. They spend an afternoon creating her character. She chooses a rogue, because it’s the closest she can get to “zoomer.” He helps her rolls her points and create a backstory. She tells the story of a girl who had to murder her brother to protect her mother.

(Lucas wonders how much of it is true.)

When Mike has a campaign ready, Max and El make their début to D&D. And they win the quest. 

Lucas is glad to have El back. He missed her. She’s just as much a part of the party as Dustin or Will or Mike. 

He doesn’t see her one on one much—Mike is a bit possessive—but they race to climb trees outside her house and he claims she’s cheating even though there’s no trace of blood under her nose and she just laughs. Mike can’t even make it to the bottom branch, and Max looks speculatively upward and says she’d like to keep her feet on the solid ground, thank you very much. 

Most of the time, it’s like that. They are happy. All that winter and Christmas, as they have snowball fights and drink hot chocolate and play games, they are happy. Steve starts driving parts of the party around, Dustin especially. 

Max loves him. She calls him her older brother and pesters him for piggyback rides. They go to basketball games and cheer for him. Steve happily obliges. 

Lucas likes Steve. Steve saved his life, after all. Plus he’s cool, and funny, and kind. Kind is important, Lucas thinks. Kind is giving to other people: escapes for Max, smiles for Will, understanding for Mike. 

Sometimes he and Max and Steve drop off Dustin and Steve lets Max drive, sitting tense beside her in the passanger seat. Lucas sits in the back and rolls his eyes at Steve’s occasional panic. 

“She’s a zoomer, Steve, didn’t you know?” 

“Shut up, dipshit, I don’t feel like dying today. Stop sign!”

They jerk to a halt, and Steve glares at Max. 

“I had it!” she insists. 

Max just likes to go. She likes to go fast, and then faster. She gets on the back of his bike and they go around town, Max whooping. Once, she tries to get him to skateboard, but he fails so miserably (he can’t even _stand still_ without falling on his tailbone) she swears him off as a pupil.

The phone rings one night near mid-feburary. Lucas’ mother answers.

“Lucas, it’s for you.”

It’s Max. “Hey,” she says, sounding tinny and tight. “Did you do the homework for Mr. Clarke’s class?”

“Yes?” he says slowly. It was due today; she should have already turned it in.

“You know all the stuff about atoms? I got something about breaking familial bonds.”

Lucas squints. There’s a code here. “Are you okay?”

“Listen, I’m just really, really stuck, and I really need some help.”

Oh. _Oh_.

“Do you need me to come get you?”

“I’ve been so stuck I’ve been staring out my window for like, an hour.”

“I’ll be there right away.”

“Okay!” The line goes dead.

Lucas grabs his coat and scarf. 

“Where are you going, sweetheart?” his mother says.

“Max just needs some help. I’ll be back by ten.”

“Be safe!” his mother calls after him.

He pulls up under her window. She’s waiting for him, already halfway out of the house. Her face is weirdly still and blank. 

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Just go,” she says. 

He gets away as fast as he can, then slows down. She’s digging her fingers into his shoulders.

“Max,” he says, feeling anger rising from his sternum, “Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she manages. 

Lucas goes back to his house, because he can’t think where else to go, and they sit on his front steps. She leans on his shoulder for a long time, staring at the yard. 

Finally, she says, “Thanks.”

“What happened?” 

She swallows.

“You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”

“No. It’s—it’s okay. Neil just…yells, sometimes, and throws things and he—he pushes Billy around and he’s slapped my mom before—” she breaks off, voice twisting and hollowing around tears.

Lucas slides an arm around her shoulder.

“It was really bad tonight. He never touches me, but. But I was scared.” She drops her head, and her hair falls to cover her face. 

He rubs his fingers over her shoulder. “Max, that’s. That’s awful.”

She makes no sound, no reply. 

“If you ever need me. _Ever_. You can always call. Just like you did tonight.”

She nods. 

There’s patches of dirty snow in the yard, reflecting blue-white light from the moon. Max shivers, from cold or fear or anger, he’s not sure. 

“Do you…do you want to stay here tonight?”

Max leans into him a bit. “I don’t…I don’t think that’s a good idea. Mom will worry. And we have school in the morning.”

But they sit there a little longer. And then Lucas takes her home and she climbs back into her window and the air is heavy. The cold settles in through his body. His Max lives with this, this upheaval of home and family. 

She’s no coward and she won’t stop fighting, but this scares him. He wants to kill the Hargroves. He’s never felt quite like that before, an actual desire to commit murder. He thinks about Max, how her face had been schooled so flat. He’ll have to get in line. The Hargroves had best watch out. 

Steve’s a help, too. He shows up at the middle school, leaning on his car, waiting for Max to drive her places. Sometimes Lucas is invited. They go to the arcade, to the Henderson/Wheeler/Byers home, to Hammond’s for a basket of fries Steve pays for and waves away their protests. He drives Max home, after, making sure she gest inside her house safely. 

Billy sends glares from across the parking lot, but for the most part, he leaves well enough alone. And if he doesn’t, Steve seems to materialize, twirling a nail-studded bat casually.

“Would you really hit him with that?” Lucas asks.

Steve sends him a look, then shifts his gaze to Max, throwing her skateboard in his backseat.

“For her? Definitely.”

The night of Steve’s high school graduation, Lucas takes her to the quarry to watch a sunset.

“It’s your hair,” he says, pointing to the horizon. 

She rolls her eyes so hard her whole head moves. “Shut up, Stalker.” But she’s smiling.

He twines their fingers, pressing their palms together. It’s the hands on the far sides of their body, and it makes a bridge. They are a bridge—a bridge between Indiana and California, a bridge between black and white, a bridge over prejudice and creating love. 

He kisses her, slow and gentle. It’s been a while since they kissed. After the snowball, they just…didn’t talk about it. They held hands and kissed once in a while, but then, things happened. She started leaving her house more and more often, and they spend time with the rest of the party and they haven’t found the appropriate space. 

If Lucas had to label it, he’d land on somewhere closer to “best friend” than “girlfriend.” He loves her, and she loves him, but right now, there is too much happening in their worlds to do much about it. They’ve kissed a few times, and they hang out, just the two of them, all the time. But this? Kissing at the quarry while watching the sunset? It feels different. It feels real. 

They’re fifteen. In the fall, they’ll be in high school. They’re getting older, learning to fit in their own skin, learning to slot into one another’s spaces and be safe. 

Steve gets a job at Hammond’s, and Max and Lucas come by to bother him. He sneaks them a basket of fries with a wink as they leave. 

It’s there that Lucas tries to take Max on their first official date. He pays for their dinner from his money from mowing lawns, dollars and quarters he’s been refraining from spending at the arcade for _weeks._

They sit across from each other in the little booth, and it’s—it’s not really that different, actually. She still makes crazy expressive faces and he still throws French fries for her to catch in her mouth until Steve shouts from the kitchen: _hey, dipshits, I’m not your mother!_ The only difference is he kisses her goodnight around the corner before dropping her off at her house.

All that summer, they grow up together. They both sprout multiple inches, they go swimming at Steve’s house, Max gets an absolutely fantastic tan, they go stargazing and camping. They learn and grow together. 

Will starts doing better. He comes over to sleepover at Lucas’ house and they watch He-Man and the Jetsons and the Incredible Hulk. They stuff themselves with candy and cookies and shoo Erica away to watch Indiana Jones. 

Lucas finds he’s missed this—just being friends without feeling like he’s on sentry duty for the Upside Down to come and sweep Will away. 

Another time the boys all stay overnight in Mike’s basement and play D&D all night long. Lucas finds he is both glad to have a boys-only night, but also misses Max the entire time. 

At one time, Lucas might have said he and Max would drift apart, like most middle-school couples. Now, he resolves to bind them together. He refuses to lose her. 

One night she calls him again to rescue her from her house. He brings her back to his house and explains to his mother what’s going on. She nods her head, smiles warmly at Max, and pours them both cold glasses of lemonade. 

Lucas takes her upstairs and they sit on his roof. She leans on him, despite the stickiness of the evening. 

“You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. I just…I miss my dad.”

Lucas waits. If she wants to tell him, she will.

“He was a good dad. He and mom fought, but he was a good dad. He used to take me surfing. I miss him.” She snuggles a little closer to him. 

“I’m sorry, Max.”

“One day, I’m going to get a real car, all of my own, and I’m going to drive to California to see him. You’re coming too. And I’ll teach you to surf. Okay?”

“Okay.” He rubs his thumb over her shoulder.

“And Neil’s not—Neil never hurts me, and Billy’s—Billy’s stopped hurting me—but it’s not. It’s not home.”

Lucas winces. 

“But you—you and Mike and everyone—that feels like home, y’know?”

“Yeah.” He tips his head down to kiss her temple. Kisses won’t fix everything, but maybe it’ll help.

Erica leans her head out the window. “Mom says you can stay in my room, Max. Please don’t tell me you’re kissing!” She makes and exaggerated gagging sound.

“Erica! Go away!” Lucas snaps. 

She smirks and disappears. 

The next day they go to the arcade and he lets her win all the games. Well, maybe he doesn’t _let_ her win. Okay, she wins no matter how hard he tries. 

Lucas looks around him and takes stock. He sees his family, loving, kind, healthy. He sees his friends, a little broken, a little healed, but absolutely loved. He sees himself, Lucas, the warrior, striving to be the best he can be. And he sees Max, bright and burning like she brought all of the California sun with her. 

This is what Lucas does: he notices things. Sometimes he acts upon what he notices. Sometimes he just digests it, and moves on.

He noticed last fall when Max follows him to the top of the bus. He notices that she calls him “stalker,” and no one else got a nickname. He noticed that she looks at him with sunshine in her eyes and open hands for holding. He notices her strength and her kindness and her sass. 

Lucas notices how Will looks at Mike the way Mike looks at El, and he notices that Mike doesn’t even realize it. Lucas notices how Dustin’s eyes light up as the possibility of discovery, and how the bottom of his backpack to staring to tear from all the books he’s carrying. Lucas notices how El has two modes of looking at the world: bright-eyed awe, or pinched-mouth anger. 

Lucas notices how Holly Wheeler has started tagging along with Mike. How, when they go play D&D, Mike’s dad is gone from their home more and more. He never asks about it, just makes sure that Erica is on hand to apply the appropriate amounts of glitter and nail polish to Holly. When Mike’s dad starts working in a different city, Lucas wisely doesn’t ask about it. Mike will tell him what he wants to tell him, and nothing more or less. 

Lucas notices who he is. Lucas is honest. He is kind. And he does his best to be a hero. 

Lucas is a boy who climbed on a bike and decided to save the world. He is a warrior, a hunter. He sticks his wrist rocket in one pocket and his compass in the other, ties his bandana around his head, and goes to war. 

But for now, he is not at war. For now, he is at peace. His friends are safe and his girlfriend ( _girlfriend_ ) loves him. His family loves him and will always support him. 

He will start high school in the fall and that will come with a new set of battles. But, right now, all is well. 

~

You are a very fine person, Lucas Sinclair, and I am very fond of you. You are only one person in a wide, wide world. So hang up your sword, and be at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Beginning and ending lines are shamelessly plagiarizing the beginning and ending of the Hobbit.
> 
> Coming soon: Max or Nancy or Steve, depending on how the muse strikes me.
> 
> [tumblr](http://www.stillusesapencil.tumblr.com)


End file.
